Tag Archives: technology

One of the most anticipated reports of the year is finally here! Each year Mary Meeker, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins ,Caufield & Byers, puts together an exhaustive analysis (355 slides) of the latest online trends. She just released her latest report earlier this month. After reading through all of the slides here are my favorite takeaways:

Fact #1

Smartphone shipment growth has dramatically declined since 2014 to just 3 percent this year, indicating that almost everyone who wants or needs a smartphone now has one.

Fact #2

Investment in Ads on Mobile devices​ has increased significantly YoY coupled with the first decrease in investment in Desktop Ads. Just looking at this slide from the 2016 report vs the 2017 report Meeker put together you can see of the $22 billion opportunity on mobile there was in 2016 – advertisers have taken advantage of the opportunity. Slowly we are closing the gap between where consumers are spending time and where advertisers are spending money.

2017 Report

2016 Report

Fact #3

These are the ad formats that are doing well and how they are doing well (the important note here is a high-performing ad unit isn’t always the one driving the most revenue). Ads that are performing well and how:

PLAs in Google- driving clicks (see fact 9 below)

Targeted Pins from Pinterest – driving product discovery + purchase

Contextual Ads from Facebook – driving direct purchases

Goal Bidding Ads for Snap – driving user action

Geo Targeted local ads (google) – driving foot traffic to stores

Incentive Based + Skippable Video Ads – positive interactions

Fact #4

Ecommerce growth is up 15% YoY in the United States.

Fact #5

While we may be very focused on the United States we can’t ignore the growth in China. Commerce grew 24 percent in China this year compared to 15 percent in the U.S., as China shifts to online shopping faster than other countries, led by giants like Alibaba with 570 million mobile monthly users.

Fact #6

Speaking of giants – if you haven’t been watching what Walmart is up to I highly encourage you to take a look. Walmart is seeing new online growth in the wake of its purchase of deep-discount site Jet.com. Beyond Jet.com Walmart has also acquired online speciality retailers such as:

Hayneedle (indoor and outdoor furniture)

ModCloth (women’s vintage inspired retailers)

Moosejaw (outdoor retailer)

Shoebuy.com (shoe retailer)

Fact #7

Google and Facebook have a combined share 85% of the estimated $72B invested in digital advertising this year. This tells us where everyone is investing there money but is troubling that two major players dominate so much of ad spend that is out there.

Fact #8

AdBlocking technology has increased significantly over the past few years, but almost exclusively on desktop with 18% of users in the US using an AdBlocker, and only 1% of users on mobile doing the same. (See slide below for a great visual of this)

Fact #9

Google PLAs now account for 52% of Paid Retail clicks on Google – up from just 29% only 2 years ago.

Fact #10

Mary Meeker forms an interesting hypothesis about the future: The future of search is about pictures not keywords. In the future Meeker goes on to speculate that voice and imagery will replace typing.

These are just some of the many facts you can find in Mary Meeker’s great report. She dives into trends in gaming, trends in China & India and more.

Thanks to a coworker I recently learned that I’ve been using my web browser wrong for most of my life. I used to hop around Safari, Firefox, and Chrome all the time but I’ve come to realize that Chrome is a much more efficient browser. Here are some basic ways to customize your browser and all are reasons you should start using Chrome.

1. User Accounts: You can be signed into multiple accounts and manage them all in different windows. Each time you select a new user it opens in a different window. From there you can enter a window with all the extensions (covered next) that you need for that particular account. If I have a client that specifically follows Sc-Fi Shows and posts content for there, for example, I can quickly scan sites I have bookmarked in folders and post to that client’s social networks which are all accessible at once through extensions.

2. Chrome Web Store: The possibilities are endless, pretty much anything you can imagine you can create a shortcut to in this store. I specifically use the Pinterest, Tumblr, Tweedeck, Twitter, Yahoo! , and Gmail extensions most frequently. Since I am already signed in as that specific client or user in all of the accounts it will publish the content I want on the correct social media accounts. It’s a no-brainer for a social media manager to be using this!

3. Folders: So you probably already know about bookmarks and folders but just to remind you …using folders is an easy way to quickly scan sites you normally check. I always scan fashion blogs in the morning and then pin or post on tumblr my favorite articles using my chrome extensions for both so I never have to leave the page. In a half hour I can quickly scan dozens of sites and post all my social networks my favorite items. It’s a no-brainer for efficiency.